Chapter 15 #4
Ben slanted a glance at her, his lips quirking at the suggestion.
He detected a thread of humour behind the words and wondered if she was thawing towards him or if she was serious.
Not being foolish, he did not immediately dismiss the notion.
The dreadful creature was constantly wrong-footing him and was a deal more perspicacious than he’d given her credit for.
She was brave too, and bold enough to do something imprudent if he did not impress upon her how dangerous a situation this really was.
“Underhand means?”
Her eyes seemed very wide and very blue behind her spectacles and entirely guileless. That ought to make a man wary. Underrating her determination to punish him, and to discover the truth about him, had been his first mistake and one he seemed doomed to repeat over and again.
“Why not?” she asked, keeping her voice light.
Anyone watching would think they were passing the usual polite nothings expected upon such an excursion.
“Because it would be the sensible thing to do,” he suggested.
She laughed, a rather rueful sound. “I’ve never been very good at being sensible, as you must know by now.
But I have the niggling suspicion that there is something nefarious going on.
I would like to believe that you are on the right side of things, but I need you to convince me of that.
Otherwise, I might decide to make your life exceedingly difficult. ”
Ben cursed under his breath. “Damn you, Izzy! You can’t poke your nose into this. It’s too dangerous.”
She met his eyes, her gaze implacable. “If you tell me not to trouble my pretty head about it, I shall strike you.”
There was a steely note behind the words that promised retribution if he dared treat her like a fool. Ben growled with frustration.
“When you were so very ill, I was terrified. I prayed and prayed that I might save you, and I — I forbade you from dying. Yet here you are, putting yourself in danger again. You might at least tell me why.”
Ben’s heart ached at her words, hearing the truth of how afraid she’d been, how hard she’d worked to keep him alive. The desire to tell her everything warred with his need to keep her out of danger, and he did not know what to do for the best.
They drove on, a stiff silence simmering between them.
“What do you want to know?
“I suggest you begin at the beginning. Who are you, really? Where have you been all these years, and why are you back in England?”
He glared at her, but she just waved her hand at him, suggesting he stop prevaricating and get on with his recital.
“I should pitch you out headfirst,” he muttered.
To his frustration, she only smiled. “Yes, yes, and I ought never to have bothered saving your sorry skin if you were only going to get yourself killed again—which I have the strong feeling you are trying to do. Now, if you do not want me to poke my nose in and ask Lord Alveston some exceedingly probing questions—”
His blood ran cold, terror striking at his heart. “You listen to me, you beautiful nitwit, stay away from Alveston. He’s more dangerous than you can imagine. He’ll kill you without a second thought if he thinks you know anything. Do you understand?”
Though she jumped a little at his sharp tone, she did not look away from him, her expression only becoming increasingly curious, plague take the girl.
“I thought so,” she said. “I felt it the first time we met. Oh, not that he was as dangerous as you say, but I disliked and distrusted him, and I cannot say I have ever felt such animosity for anyone before.”
Ben sighed, slowing the horses to a walk.
“If I tell you, it will be on two conditions. One, you must speak of this to no one and never let on that you know a thing about it. Two, you will keep out of it, you will not pursue Alveston or ask dangerous questions. And I’ll have your word, Miss Honeywell. ”
She sat silently beside him, and Ben studied her profile with increasing impatience.
“Well?” he exclaimed after the silence became interminable.
“I’m thinking!”
“What the devil is there to think about?”
Her elegant shoulders lifted in a slight shrug. “I might figure it all out by myself and then I need promise you nothing.”
Ben groaned. This was bad. She was going to take a good deal of careful handling, and he had promised himself not to handle her at all.
In any way. With its usual idiocy and recklessness, his mind immediately conjured the vision of his hands filled with her delicious breasts, squeezing and fondling her in ways that made his blood fire in his veins.
Stop it. Concentrate, you great lout. He turned back to her, glowering unhappily.
“You’ll get us both killed, or possibly just me if you’re lucky.”
She let out an irritated huff. “Oh, very well. If you’re going to get all dramatic. I promise no one will ever know, and I promise not to ask probing questions if it will put me in danger. Happy?”
“Ecstatic,” he retorted, still unreasonably unsettled by the sinful visions his mind had stirred up. The temptation to drive her into the nearest stand of trees and ruffle her exquisite ensemble beyond mending was nigh on irresistible.
“Well, go on, then.” She waved her hands at him once more.
“Stop doing that,” he told her, taking her hands and placing them firmly in her lap. A mistake. She blushed as their fingers tangled, and so prettily he found it hard to look away. Still, he removed his hand, returned his attention to the horses, and tried to focus his ill-behaved mind.
The scent of damp earth and rotting leaves and the fresh bite of the icy air filled his nose, and he experienced a sudden longing for the fresh salt tang of the sea.
Having spent most of his childhood in Paris, it had surprised him to discover how much he loved the sea, and now how much he missed it.
For now, he shoved any notions of what he might want or hope for aside as he considered where to begin.
“What do you know of my family?”
“I only know the gossip. That your father…”
She hesitated, and he laughed bitterly.
“Oh, don’t hold back now, Miss Honeywell. My father is a thoroughgoing villain, and yet far worse than anyone realises.”
She cleared her throat nervously but carried on. “He abducted a young woman, an heiress, but her father would not pay the dowry, whether or not he married her. But he took her to France and married her anyway, hoping the man would relent. He did not.”
“Precisely so, and I pray you will not overtax your imagination wondering what kind of marriage they enjoyed, or what manner of father he made. It was not pretty.”
There followed a taut silence and Ben dared to entertain the forlorn hope she would not wish to know any more. Idiot. He started as her hand reached out and covered his.
“I’m so sorry. I lost my mother when I was very young, but I know she and Papa were very happy, and after she had passed, my sisters doted on me.
Clementine is as much my mother as my sister.
My life has been one of security and love.
I cannot pretend to know how it was for you, but I would be glad if you would tell me. ”
To Ben’s profound horror, emotion welled in his chest, an odd tightness in his throat that he fought down with every iota of willpower he possessed.
When he finally spoke, the words were brisk and impassive.
The facts only. “My father was a brute. He abandoned us mostly, only coming back when he wanted something. My mother was frail, he bullied her until she gave up even trying to stand up to him. She died when I was thirteen, a few weeks after the Treaty of Amiens broke down. She had desperately wished to return to England, and I had promised to get the funds, but then war broke out again and with it she lost hope.”
He shrugged. Well, that was it in a nutshell.
He felt her eyes on him, could feel her desire to comfort him radiating from her, as if he stood before a warming fire on a frosty night, but he kept his attention on the horses.
“She killed herself.”
Ben had never said that out loud to anyone before. A part of him wondered why on earth he had done so now, except perhaps he wanted to shock her, to make her realise how dark and grubby his life was so she would see sense and leave him be before he dragged her into the murk with him.
“That… That must have been terribly hard for you. Did you have friends, anyone else who—”
Anger rose in his chest as he heard the sorrow behind her words, an unnamed fury that sought to recoil from the kindness she offered him so freely, despite the way he’d treated her.
“For the love of God, don’t pity me. It was a long time ago.
I’m not a motherless little boy and was hardly what you’d call innocent, even then.
My mother taught me what it was to be a gentleman, but my father taught me how to be a bastard, how to survive no matter what, and I put his teaching to good use. ”
They drove on in silence for a while as Ben composed himself. He was behaving like an ill-mannered brute. His father’s son, apparently.
“Very well. No sympathy. So what did you do?” she asked, her tone brisk and cool, for which he was grateful.
“I left Paris. I’d been making ends meet by translating documents for English émigrés, those trying to persuade the authorities to let them return home, but I’d started getting work from—let’s say less respectable sources,” he said with a curl of his lip.
“One of them mentioned my father, and that he was living in Calais. Reading between the lines, I discovered he was doing a brisk trade in smuggled goods from England.”
“A profitable trade, as Napoleon had placed an embargo on British goods,” she observed.
Ben nodded. “I decided to find out exactly what he was up to. I was… angry with him.” Possibly the understatement of the century, but he left it at that. “The idea of getting him thrown in gaol was one I embraced with enthusiasm.”